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For Grace Chatting, a conventional retirement held no appeal. At 70, she set up a group to help women develop in their business and personal lives

Former social worker Grace Chatting’s women’s group was never going to be about knitting or baking cakes. She set up Western Women Mean Business when she turned 70 to help entrepreneurial females develop in their business and personal lives.

After nearly two years, her group has confronted many a risqué topic, not least what women really think about their sex lives, via a talk from author Isabel Losada, who has just written a book on the subject. From smarter marketing to achieving a growth mindset, this is not your average “stitch-and-bitch” group.

Ms Chatting was inspired by a comment attributed to the Dalai Lama at a peace summit nearly a decade ago. “He said, ‘The world will be saved by the Western woman,’” she recalls. “And I thought, ‘We women are used to dumbing ourselves down, keen to please and fit in. If we just leveraged our abilities and soft skills, collaborated more and played smart, we would get somewhere.’”

Ultimately, Ms Chatting wants to inspire women to support others worldwide, and some of her group are planning an informal trip to Malawi this summer to help mentor female entrepreneurs there.

Women need to learn not to be so deferential in the presence of men and more ready to stand their ground

An orthodox retirement never appealed to Ms Chatting, whose career has led from social work and family mediation to psychotherapy. “I consciously decided to make changes throughout my life at the approach of each new decade,” she says. “Coming up to 70, I felt I still had a lot of music left in me.”

This new venture – a 50-strong group of women entrepreneurs, many with young families – feels like freedom, and she gets out as much as she puts in. “It feels bold. I’m not fitting in to anyone’s expectations or justifying myself to anyone. I get a lot of positive feedback from the group. They’re very lively and creative and that feels good. It keeps my own brain cells going too.”

Her three children, now grown up, are supportive, as is her husband. “They have read all the members’ positive comments. Some are glowing reviews,” she says. “They’ve been gobsmacked and have each told me how much they admire what I’m doing.” The odd negative comment has not thwarted her. A friend reportedly asked when she was going to stop all her “nonsense”. Her response was “not any time soon”.

Men, some of them husbands of group members, say they want to join, but she fears that would skew the dynamic. “Women need to learn not to be so deferential in the presence of men and more ready to stand their ground.” But one day she hopes to create a wider group, not least to help men make meaningful connections. “Men gather around sport, but don’t open their hearts to each other and that can be very lonely, especially as they grow older. How great it would be to build a group with no big egos, where people can discuss without needing to dominate or talk each other down. That’s my pipe dream.”

For now, she is busy building a new website and writing for it. Her room is a blur of sticky notes with a year’s content planned. She says: “Growing older in retirement can be about putting something back too. It doesn’t just have to be about work. I want to be a role model and to help others pass it on, however Pollyannaish that may sound. Work doesn’t feel like work if you love it.”